Heat removal from a steam power plant using a thermal chimney is an innovation whereby the air underneath the chimney is heated up by receiving the removed heat from the power plant through a surface heat exchanger. The heated air flows up the chimney due to a natural convection. Theoretical analysis was performed by creating a mathematical model from the fundamental conservation equations in order to study the effect of the chimney shape such as constant area chimney, convergent top chimney, and divergent top chimney. Results are presented in comparison with numerical results obtained from ANSYS-CFX, a commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code. The results obtained from both approaches were found to be in good agreements. The divergent top chimney leads to an augmentation of flow and shows good potential in the removal of heat from the power plant.
Keywords
heat removal, thermal chimney, divergent top chimney, heat removal with thermal chimney